The few tips I will share with you in this article, are not earth shattering and going to leave you with one of your “WOW” moments in life. They are very simple, but when done consistently make you referable and unfortunately when neglected will keep you trapped in average. So the question you should be asking is not whether you know these things, but rather whether you consistently do these things every day. When you get these few basics right, you open the door to one of the greatest multipliers available to anyone, namely peoples willingness to refer you to other people.
Show up on timeWhen attending any meetings with your customers and prospects, do you show up on time, “Every time”? I believe that the greatest respect you can show to anyone is when you show respect towards their most valuable possession, namely their time. My view is that, if you show up even one minute late for a meeting, you are showing the person they are not important and more importantly you are under pressure and not relaxed, when the meeting starts, so how can you give your best?
By arriving early you have time to prepare mentally for the meeting, you are relaxed when the meeting starts and you are showing the person that you are grateful for the opportunity to have some of their valuable time. All of which, help to put the person you are meeting with on the front foot, making them far more receptive and responsive towards you. They are thus far more willing to listen to what you have to say or offer them.
Yes of course it takes planning and preparation to ensure that you are always on time, but is that not also one of the reasons you are referable. The people referring you to someone else know in the back of their mind, that they can depend on you to also be prepared, when you meet the people they refer you to. This makes them feel comfortable that you will also show up on time for the meeting with the people they refer you to and that you will add real value to them as well. All of which will reflect well on them.
Always do what you say you will doThere is nothing worse than someone, who makes commitments to other people and then fails to deliver on them and nothing that will help you build trust with people more than under promising and over delivering. It astounds me how many people let other people down, not necessarily because they do not do what they promised, but because they are forced to rely on someone else to do something and that person lets them down. A perfect example of this would be a sale professional, who secures a sale with a customer and then the delivery does not arrive at the client as promised.
The sales professional does not control deliveries, but the customer does not care about who controls any part of the sales process, all they want is a delivery, which is on time. Unfortunately most “sales people” do not see this as their role and neglect to follow-up with despatch to see if the delivery will be on time. A “Sales Professional” on the other hand knows that in order to build trust and sustain a mutually beneficial relationship with their client, they must follow-up and ensure that everything goes smoothly, throughout the sales process.
How long do you think it would take to follow-up every day to check on the deliveries to your customers, to ensure that they are on time? Imagine if there is a challenge, for whatever reason and you communicate this to your customers early in the day, informing them of the challenge, before they need to call you? Will this not empower you to build the relationship with your customers even more? Will your customer not be even more likely to refer you to someone else?
Say “Please and Thank You”I know this must seem really obvious, but it astounds me to see how many sales professionals out there do not use these two crucial sales tools to their advantage. Simply by showing respect for your customers, where they are aware of how important they are to you and by consistently showing them that you are indeed there to be of service to them, you make yourself far more valuable to your customers and obviously you then become far more referable too.
To become referable, where you can leverage every customer and get them to refer you to someone else starts with these three simple things. Show up on time for every meeting, always, Always, ALWAYS do what you say you will do and then show respect and gratitude for everything, by simply saying “PLEASE and THANK YOU”. What could be simpler than this?
Andrew Horton is one of South Africa's top sales training experts. He will support, uplift and inspire sales professionals to explore the limits of their potential and awaken the sales giants, which resides within all of them. His sales training presentation is aimed at inspiring sales professionals, helping them to become re-energised and eager to achieve their sales targets. The sales tools and powerful tried and tested practical sales techniques, they will be introduced to during his presentation, will help any sales professional to immediately up their game and to become a real sales giant, within their markets. Visit my website at http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/sales-training